Nothing is wasted! Even a heritage that one has taken measure of, reflected upon, then with effort to transition, to construct a more humane self, – that old wreckage in the rear-view-mirror is a resource for insight.

Nietzsche states that holiness is nothing but a quest for purity. Saintliness is to insist upon unifying with the unstained, unwrinkled, and unsullied. A strange and dangerous solitude indeed! The upshot of the attitude, if this is “what one wants,” one responds with pity for everyone else who is contaminated with the human-all-too-human.

But wait, the story does not end there. Even pity, that superior elevation too, is felt as a stain, something to be rid of.

The highest instinct of cleanliness
puts someone afflicted with it into
the strangest and most dangerous solitude,
in the form of a holy saint:

because this is what holiness is
– the highest spiritualization of this instinct…

The pity of the saint
is a pity
for the filth of the human,
all-too-human.

And there are degrees and heights
where he feels
even pity

as a form of pollution, as filth . . .

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Norman, aphorism 271

Time enough for more racetrack photos! Why do I feel compelled by a racetrack, and by all that happens there? Because it is a interesting mix of the purity of engineering, of clean design and the wild-assed serendipity of dirt and rubber on asphalt, and the odor of racing gasoline, and oil.